updated 03:30 pm EDT, Wed April 29, 2009

Palm May Short Pre Supply

Palm may deliberately keep supplies of the Pre artificially low to create a perceived shortage and spur demand, analysts estimate. Rather than ship as many as possible, the phone producer is believed by Bloomberg to be shipping about 375,000 devices in the first wave and to count on a relatively quick sellout. By making the phone elusive early on, Palm would both garner headlines and would help encourage better follow-up sales.

The company is expected to base its rollout on Apple's experiences with the iPhone 3G last year. Apple sold 1 million units on the July 2008 launch weekend and had sold out at nearly all of its own retail stores within several days. Shortages were common at stores for the first several weeks and were reflective of Apple's sales of 6.9 million iPhones during that summer.

Palm is heavily dependent on the Pre's launch to remain in business. The Sunnyvale-based company has been quickly burning through its cash as sales of its present-day phones continue to weaken and has taken to reselling shares to give itself enough funding to stay in business through at least the initial launch of the Pre, which is still on track for no later than June.

what a load of c***. What this really means is: Palm doesn't have enough money left to pay for its production run, so it's cutting back on its order. And if those don't sell quickly, there won't be a second order.

if that's what you consider cachet, well then go with it.Does limited mean exclusive? Only if Palm can't afford to build any more and those 375,000 are the only Pres that will ever be built. Guaranteed Palm is short on funds. No company would ever do this for a product that will supposedly have demand for millions of units. They might as well just go for broke. Oops. I guess they've already been there.

Honestly I hope the Pre does well, I think it's a silly name, but any good competitor to Apple that isn't Microsoft is fine by me. I am not excited about the storm, but I think it'd be nice if two or three smart phones became major platforms and drove the prices into a good area for consumers.